Page 6 of Mountain Men Heroes

He bent to place a chaste kiss to her cheek before pegging Drake with a pair of gloves he pulled from his back pocket. “Saddle up man, we’ve had an avalanche on the backside of Base One. Rangers are already scouting the area and have called in the additional support. You and me are playing air taxi too.”

Base One. “How bad?” She let the question slip out as if she was only asking out of fear for the possibly injured people. She cared for them, hoped they were all okay and could make it down in one piece and breathing, but if the back passage up the mountain was closed, she’d be trapped here with Drake until she could do what she came here to do. That was beyond dangerous.

“Don’t know. It wasn’t anyone we took up. People fool enough to be back there alone, sorry to say it, has it coming.”

Drake rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and nodded as Ethan pulled back to the truck to give them some space.

Drake turned to her. “Wait for me. Don’t go anywhere. We need to talk. Wait for me?”

Damn. His eyes pleaded with her and it cut her deeper than she thought possible. She swallowed and bit at her inner lip. Pine invaded her senses and those damn eyes of his made her weak at the knees. He stood so close. Warm fingers cupped her face, and he held her attention the second his fiery gaze locked on hers with enough heat to ignite something so deep within her that no one had touched in forever. Well, frankly, since him.

“I’ll pick you up from the lodge.” Of course, he knew where she would be with only one place in this small town.

No question in his tone, no plea for obedience. Simply stated, Drake expected her to obey. She braced herself. Air caught in her lungs, refusing to budge. He lowered his head just as Ethan honked his horn. She clenched her hands at her side to keep from holding him where he stood. “I won’t be long.” His words brushed against her ears and reached deep inside to stir up more than emotions. He conjured up something else she didn’t quite understand. There was no stopping the warm flush that consumed her from head to toe.

Damn him.

Esmeralda watched the tail lights of their truck disappear around the corner of the gas station. Drake Savage knew better than to turn his alpha as fuck machoness loose on her.

Three

Climb the damn mountain.

Spread her father’s ashes.

Find what her father sent her for.

Be gone before anyone can come looking for her.

Namely Drake.

Esmeralda mentally ticked off the four points. Two hours ago in the shower of her tiny lodge room it had sounded like a perfectly solid plan.

Now her heart did a little jig just thinking about his warm touch and kissable lips. The way his hand felt holding hers. Gentle yet strong. Instead of stiff and damn near frozen solid like hers.

Every second that passed the once blue skies turned a murkier gray.

Snow. And, by the looks of it, a lot.

Nailing one out of three on her to-do list was pathetic. She held several self-titled degrees in how to escape assigned bodyguards yet couldn’t manage to keep a low profile for more than two hours? In her defense, she still had time to make her great escape. She only needed to spread her father’s ashes and haul ass back to Fairbanks and the nearest airport before any of the six Savage brothers caught on to her plan. If one thing they did well it was work together when they had a plan and if one wanted something they all teamed up. And one thing she did not want was to be the center of their attention when they had a plan.

“Why did it have to be him? Why Drake?”

She groaned, not that anyone would hear her halfway up the backside of a mountain.

Cold fingers of regret ran the length of her spine.

He smelled so good. Like Ivory soap with a mixture of pine and snow. She loved the freshness of snow.

Echoes of the past jolted her out of the black funk that had dogged her for the past few days—going on what felt like forever—in the time it took to say hello. Talk about bad timing.

When he’d uttered her name in that deep voice of his, almighty Thor’s hammer would do less damage to her self-control. Another second and she may have done something unacceptable. Like tossing herself into his arms and feeling him up. God, he must really pity her.

Did it count if she rolled her eyes at her own actions? Could she have been any more obvious? She dug her toes into the firmly packed snow and hauled herself belly first over a freshly felled tree the size of a horse.

All she had to do was make it another couple of hours, pull off some highly evasive maneuvers, maybe a few Hail Mary’s and make like Mick Jaggar back to the lodge. Hell, screw that. She’d call from the airplane and have her stuff forwarded back to New York.

Nah. Scratch that idea. Nosy Mr. Kravitz back at the lodge would rat her out and give anyone and everyone in town her address.

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